[It’s not nostalgic, revisiting just a few months ago with respect and even whatever degree of gratitude an enthusiastic convalescent can pretend to conjure. this mixtape is from the pre-“enth. conv.”-era. it’s more like…ah, i dunno what was happening in Sept. anymore – the Convention, right? no, that was the week before… i dunno. does anyone remember September really well?

it’s not wrong to like records, even when you’re agnostic about being somebody who plays music or sings songs in public. just try to remember all the songs of other people’s that you like. that’ll help. sartre notwithstanding, other people always help.]

last to die bruce springsteen + estreet. the last thing i’d’ve expected hot off the breathtaking solo tour and the snooze-y pete segger crap would’ve been a bunch of relatively noisy, starry-eyed and also relatively fast rock action from the Boss. but magic has a lot of it. and a lotta other stuff that’s good, and one really pie-eyed Crazy Horse style jam (“devil’s arcade”. well, that’s what it makes me think of anyway.)

spin rose melberg i dunno how much you know about K records, but i dunno much. i love this melberg solo alb, tho. i did go back and get a a Softies alb, too. once upon a time i went to college in TN. a short-lived ex-i-dunno-if-you-could-call-her-girlfriend put melberg stuff on several (otherwise pretty good) mixtapes. the ex-i-dunno-what is a cellist for emo bands and other crossover successes these days. (wow, that story had something for everyone, as Andy would say.) i printed out the lyrics and chords for this song. they’re sitting right over there.

four provinces walkmen nevermind my half-formed original comments, what a depressing and great new walkmen alb! it’s surely beautiful, but with the exception of this standout caffeinated track and one other (the one called something/something “new year”), You and Me is not what i need to be listening to. also i love the alb cover from this one

green eyes husker du it took me almost a decade to go from respecting/admiring husker du to really “getting it,” then placing them irrevocably in my top whatever-of-all-time pantheon. tho they have lived in my clammiest of ear-hearts for years now, it’s only since 2007 that i’ve gotten in on flip yr wig. oh cripes! how can a song this pretty make me so afraid? grant hart, ladies and women-men.

canvey island baby adam franklin let’s talk lex: 2008 is a shoegaze year in general, but an adam franklin (guy from magnetic morning/swervedriver/toshack highway) year in particular. here’s only a small part of the reason why.

too long in my mind chris connelly another man with a long and prestigious pedigree, here offering some of the finest bowie/walker worship you can find.

peoria airiel here’s a band i’ve gotta hand it to, key finds of mine that play exactly the brand of “is anybody actually reading this?” that i wanna hear.

little twig neil halstead just because this newest neil alb isn’t “exciting” doesn’t mean it isn’t also awesome. you know that as well as i do. neither neil alone nor mojave together have made anything as great as spoon and rafter in a while, but who has, exactly? mebbe the walkmen? and that’s apples and non-apples, too. at least kinda. i love the combo of wash-y acoustic strum with bearded british vocs.

papa won’t you take me back to town bobbie gentry i know nothing about this – so somebody tell me – except that it sounds like a “lady” Tony Joe White.

ice field bright channel i’ve dropped this one on ben and george, a personal fave for the ice-y guitars, non-reverbed drumming and overall albini treatment that makes this such an a-typically tough alb. i’d like to hear the newer one ASAP, having absorbed this s/t-alb entirely. (eugene note: this makes perfect sense for you Yeltsin fans out there.) totally great, evocative song-titling work hear, aussi.

i hate rock and roll st. johnny this is another one of my fave (re-)discoveries of 2008, more really electrifyingly drone-y early 90s stuff. andrew earles is right to shout out st johnny’s “go to sleep” 7-inch, which was one of a few parcels accompanying my first ever mailorder, from AJAX (rip) in shucks, 1992 or 1993. (and of course, T. Moore is right to shout out Earles and Jensen, as discussed in the aforementioned Earles tour-de-90sSY-ish rock)

voodoo candle (live at lollapalooza) son volt first heard the gbv-ish, “rock” version of this number as played by the spencer/anders/jay Gob Iron lineup, though it’s originally recorded as a single for jay’s first solo album sebsastopol, which some people like a lot and others see as the pivotal sorta “end of the beginning” of jay farrar’s career. it’s a treat to hear jay farrar play guitar solos, and mebbe it’s jay’s leads that make me enjoy the crap outta how this track reminds me of, shucks, uncle tupelo in a way.

the hammer hamilton bohannon okay, a pallette cleanser. boom! this is where your american funk meets your afrobeat-ish sloganeering and even-more-afrobeat-ish poly-pol-poly.

opto-isolator christmas decorations nick forte from radio 4 AND beautiful skin AND computer cougar AND rorschach also has an arty, ambient, eno-y sythh/wash/space/dream/moon/’pop’/ alb on kranky. that’s a hell of a legacy, really, and it’s a legacy of quality to match any serious hardware store. everything forte touches turns into gilded silk of one kingdom or another, and this track in particular is just a pleasant space, no less and nothing else.

crush shiner i might as well call “builtonaweakspot rock” that whole, old-but-new-to-me canon of MW gtr rock that stood toe-to-toe with the best punk rock of all coasts in them mid-late 1990s. i don’t care that you can’t hang with the vocs. i care enough about the gtrs that i could hang through ani difranco vocs over ’em, prolly.

raise your head electro group never have i had so much contempt for and suspicion about the very idea of my, lex dexter, playing music or singing or writing songs. but that’s another story – here’s this story: the electro group “new pacifica” alb is exactly what i hear that doesn’t make me wanna not play guitar again, never. best bassplaying in a shoegaze band since lou barlow in dino.

reruns
(in keeping with the Jeemus-talk on the OG, and in keeping with the spirit of the Prison Schooner… I will begin posting/bumping/resurrecting some “reruns” from one yester-year or another. see the post below, par example…and many others forthcomin’.)

I’m tired of these words, or more specifically their contemporary connotations:

1) Eclectic: it’s hard for me to take this adj. for anything but a slur, evoking diletattantish ‘jack-of-all-trades’ pretentions. It’s a perfect word for the wishy-washy, ultimately Western-based ‘World Music’ and ‘World Culture’ lauded by NPR imbeciles. Or for describing a Pat Metheny album with a guest appearance by some DJ or dancer or something (oh shoot! crazy!)

2) Funky: Okay, I’m hardly Catfish from the JBs or nothing, but I wanna suggest that we refrain from describing dress shops, restaurants, interior decoration or lifestyles* as ‘funky.’ Actually, I’ll go so far as saying we should stop describing non-funk music (including disco, soul, r+b and other music made by traditionally ‘funky’ people, who are inevitably also ‘black’ people) as funky. Raenie could probably take me to task on this, knowing much more about these genres than me. But I wanna suggest we don’t cry ‘funky’ for every wah pedal or slap bass we hear.

3) Surreal: I think this one speaks for itself. We should also include ‘surreal”s overworked brother ‘Kafkaesque’ in the mix.

Any more suggestions? Objections? I’m trying to get some interaction outta you people. Ben, Raenie and Will are carrying a lotta weight these days over at the poisonshake.

* In what’s close to a marxist moralist aside during the conclusion of Postmodernism, Jameson cites discourse of ‘lifestyle’ and ‘sexual orientation’ as only possible under ‘late capitalist’ (sic) relations of production and pomo culture. He’s funny and he’s right, I think.